


The Battle of Gamma Clearing (Stories of the Blue Book)

by parliament_square



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-23
Updated: 2011-06-23
Packaged: 2017-10-20 16:05:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/214536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parliament_square/pseuds/parliament_square
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which a child (or a weapon) is rescued (or captured). The first in a series of stories about the War of Silence.</p><p>Warning: Young child in danger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Battle of Gamma Clearing (Stories of the Blue Book)

**Author's Note:**

>   
> _Demons run_  
>  When a good man goes to war  
> Night will fall and drown the sun  
> When a good man goes to war  
> Friendship dies and true love lies  
> Night will fall and the dark will rise  
> When a good man goes to war  
> Demons run but count the cost  
> The battle’s won but the child is lost  
> 

Her dreams are strange, full of shadows and the glint of metal, the smell of terror and a woman’s shrieks. She can never quite remember them when she wakes, but during the night she tosses and turns, crying out in her sleep, wordless and afraid.

Outside her tent, her guards murmur uneasily. Kovarian forbids them to enter, or even to speak to the prisoner, and they know that the orders are for their own good: the prisoner isn’t what she seems. She’s strong, and ruthless, and she could rip them to pieces at a whim, if they ventured too close. After all, her father has destroyed whole worlds and brought down entire civilisations with just a wave of his fearsome weapon, and the memory of the green light of that weapon haunts more than one soldier’s own dreams.

Still. They’re soldiers, but they’re not monsters. Many have a child of their own at home, and the hopeless sobbing of a little girl isn’t an easy sound to hear, however fearsome she may in fact be. While none dare to enter the tent and console her during the long midnight hours, some have begun to offer her shy, furtive smiles in the daytime. Even though these smiles are met with the steady, otherworldly gaze of the child, and no smile given in return, a few stubbornly keep it up.

‘She’s just a wee thing,’ one of these soldiers is saying. He has a family of his own, a home-husband and twin toddlers, and if either of his toddlers cried that weak forsaken cry, he would be at their cot in an instant.

‘Hush,’ his companion says, although he spoke under his breath. She hits him gently in the arm. ‘She’s Doctor spawn. She looks like a child, but she has powers we can’t even understand.’

He looks around uneasily, at the shifting shadows of the forests. The rustling of the breeze in the trees is uncanny, and makes him remember the way his hair prickled on his neck, when Manton unhooded the Headless Monks at Demon’s Run. He crosses himself. But there are no Monks here. ‘She’s still just a wee thing,’ he says obstinately. ‘Perhaps she can be persuaded to give up her allegiance to him.’

His companion shivers. She too has heard the rustling of the trees. ‘Kovarian will try,’ she allows. ‘If it can be done, if we can use his weapon against him, she’ll do it. Heaven pray that it’s in time.’ She has a ten-year-old child at home: too young to fight, but old enough to be murdered, if the Doctor arrives to rain fire on them all.

‘Quiet,’ a boy-soldier snaps at them, from across the small clearing. ‘The trees.’

They take up defensive positions, scanning the trees for any sign of movement. The Forest People are primitive. They don’t understand the necessity of keeping a child caged, crying her fears into the night. They don’t understand the bitter war the Clerics fight, or the hopeless odds they face, against he who calls himself the Doctor. They don’t understand, and some nights they launch little raids, swinging noiselessly from the trees, trying to free the girl child who weeps.

Tonight may be one of those nights, and the soldiers watch the swaying of the trees uneasily. Inside the tent, the soft whimpering trails off, and they exchange glances.

‘Why did we have to come to this blasted planet?’ one sergeant bursts out suddenly, kicking at a fallen branch. ‘Why not build a fortress, or a prison, for…’ He bites off a curse, eyes darting wildly around the clearing.

‘Quiet, Bagsic,’ their commander warns, feeling chills run down her phantom leg. Even with a prosthetic, she can still remember the blast that took it off. She knows it’s superstitious, and not worthy of a Cleric, but she thinks it warns her of trouble.

‘But why here?’ he asks again.

He shouldn’t have challenged her. ‘Because Kovarian knows it to be needed,’ she says sternly, and stares him down. ‘Speak again, Bagsic, and I’ll put a note on your record.’ She’s grown old in Kovarian’s service, and she would’ve liked to have a child of her own before it was too late, but she knew better than to give a hostage to fortune. Having sacrificed what she has – a leg and the possibility of a family - she’ll take no backchat from an inferior who thinks he knows how to fight the Doctor better than Kovarian does.

With half of the guard looking at the two of them, and the other half still nervously watching the trees, none of them hear the flap of the tent being pulled back.

‘They’re singing to me,’ a clear child’s voice says.

The guard whirls as one, weapons coming up, but the child takes no notice of the guns pointed her way. Perhaps she doesn’t realise what they are, the commander thinks; the Forest People sleep during the day, so the Clerics have never had to fire their weapons in the daytime, when the child would have seen. And the child has never before tried to venture from her tent in the night.

‘Commander Tshawe,’ one of her youngest soldiers says nervously, her voice trembling.

Tshawe makes a curt gesture of silence, then points her weapon toward the ground and takes two steps toward the child, still a safe distance. Although how far is safe is all conjecture, she thinks, feeling adrenaline begin to spike. The child hasn’t yet revealed her powers; perhaps she can strike at a hundred paces, or a thousand. But such thoughts accomplish nothing.

‘Who sings to you?’ Tshawe says, and thanks God that her voice doesn’t wobble.

The child’s eyes are clear, her gaze unafraid as it settles on Tshawe. She can’t be more than seven, and perhaps younger, Tshawe thinks, and yet she looks at an armed platoon of soldiers without flinching. ‘The trees.’

Muttering from behind her – Bagsic, most likely, and his mate Gabor – and Tshawe makes the silencing gesture again. ‘The trees sing to you?’ she repeats. If the child tries to leave her tent, Tshawe will have to restrain her and call Kovarian. Perhaps if she keeps the child talking, she’ll go back to her cot.

‘Yes,’ the child says. ‘When the dreams come, the trees sing to me.’ She looks around the clearing, and Tshawe gets the distinct feeling that she’s weighing them in the balance and finding them wanting. ‘They tell me to be strong, and to have faith.’

Tshawe swallows. This child _is_ strong, and what might the Forest People be telling her? Are they awakening her to her full destructive powers? (Or, a little voice inside Tshawe asks, has she already been awakened to those powers, during the year Kovarian took her away, leaving them here to guard a ghost encampment? No Cleric knows what happened during that missing year.) Have the trees now incited the child to open the tent flap and destroy them all with a wave of her hand, as her father is said to do?

The child’s eyes return to Tshawe. ‘You’re afraid.’ She sounds curious. ‘Why are you afraid?’

I’m afraid of _you_ , Tshawe thinks, but even if she could say that to this child, she wouldn’t say it in front of her command. ‘Why have you left your cot?’ she asks instead.

The little girl puts her head to one side, wiggles her bare toes in the dirt at the edge of the tent, her nightgown blowing a little in the soft breeze. ‘The song changed.’ She looks around at them again. ‘It’s always the same. It comes to me when I have the dreams. But now it changed.’

‘Lord have mercy,’ Nakamura breathes, somewhere behind her, and Tshawe knows he’s thinking of his twins. She sympathises, but –

‘O’Sullivan, keep your partner quiet,’ she bites over her shoulder. Then, against her better judgment, she drops to her good knee, putting her face on level with the child’s.

The child looks at her, just looks.

‘What are the trees singing now?’ Tshawe asks. She listens, but can hear nothing except the usual soft susurrus of the wind in the trees.

The child smiles at her. It takes Tshawe’s breath away, the sweetness of that smile, and she feels her grip on reality trying to slip away. It would be so easy to spring forward, to unlock the restraints around those baby wrists and ankles (humane air-restraints, to be sure, not the clanking manacles of the Dark Ages, but still), to clasp her in a hug and sing to her, as you should for a little girl with a nightmare. It would be so easy to forget that this child is a weapon of death, a ruthless, alien force to be bent to their will and used against a genocidal maniac.

The child smiles, and Tshawe finds herself smiling back. It’s wrong, and dangerous, but her troop can’t see, and it does no harm – does it?

‘They’re singing about a blue box,’ the child says, all sweetness and innocence, and Tshawe feels time slow around her, a chill prickle rushing across her arms. ‘A blue box, and a man. They said my name, and they said to get up and come out.’

Tshawe would like to be on her feet and backing away, but she seems to be frozen, as the child’s voice continues remorselessly on. ‘They said, Melody, come outside, and you’ll be free.’

‘And you are.’

Tshawe’s heard that voice before, issuing from underneath a cowl. As she levers herself to her feet and turns around, she mentally thanks Kovarian for assigning couples to different platoons – at least Binyamin has a chance of getting out alive. A small chance, but if she’s to die tonight, she prefers to go out with hope in her breast.

‘Doctor,’ she says. Around her, her troop has levelled weapons on the tall, unsmiling figure. Only a few of those weapons shake, and she spares a moment to be proud of them. She doesn’t raise her own.

He looks at her, and the smile that curves at his mouth chills her bones. ‘Give Melody to me, and I’ll let you live.’

Nakamura watches, heart in his throat, as the Commander and the Doctor face each other. Between them stretches the small clearing and its guard, weapons still trained on the Doctor, but the two of them seem to only have eyes for each other. Next to Nakamura, O’Sullivan’s arm is shaking. His own is steady, but for how long? This is the Doctor, the stuff of legend.

‘How can I trust your word?’ the Commander asks, her face stern and remote. Buying time, Nakamura knows; Bagsic may mouth off, but he does his job, and he surreptitiously hit the panic button on the main communicator as soon as the Doctor appeared. Kovarian will be on her way by now, if only they can hold until she arrives.

The Doctor raises his eyebrows. ‘I’m not the one pointing the guns.’

Nakamura can see the child poking her head around the Commander’s side, trying to see what’s going on, and he curses his own tender heart. He’s going soft, with Tommy and Miyu at home. Keep the gun steady, Jiro, he tells himself, keep the gun steady.

He sees the Commander take a steadying breath. Her own gun is still pointed at the ground, as she stands unprotected in front of the most fearsome warrior in the universe, and he respects her more than ever before. Not that it’ll do her much good now, not tonight.

‘You’re also not the one with a hostage,’ the Commander says. ‘How do you think this will end, Doctor?’

Nakamura’s looking at the Commander and the child, not the Doctor, so he doesn’t see the Doctor’s reaction. Instead, he sees the child’s face, puzzled, as she asks the Commander, ‘What’s a hostage?’

The next moment is a bit muddled. Nakamura hears the Doctor take a step or two forward, and O’Sullivan’s gasp of dismay, but his own attention is on Kovarian, who comes flying out of the child’s tent, picks up the child, and presses a pistol to her temple.

‘Try me, Doctor,’ she spits at him.

The Commander falls back a couple of paces, her mouth dropping open, although Nakamura’s not sure why she’s surprised. Kovarian's always done what needs to be done, and she’s never shown any mercy. When Aidan fell asleep on picket duty, she had him whipped, then discharged from the Clerics. While Aidan’s now happy raising the twins and running a small cooking outfit on the side, neither he nor Nakamura has forgotten.

When Nakamura looks back at the Doctor, he’s stilled, but he has The Screwdriver in his hand. ‘I would be very careful, Kovarian,’ he says, softly, and they always say that the Doctor is the most dangerous when he speaks softly, Nakamura thinks, slightly hysterically. ‘I would be very careful, if I were you.’

She laughs, baring her teeth, ruthless and beautiful. ‘You come unarmed and unsupported into a platoon of armed soldiers, and expect to win the day? You were doomed before I arrived, _Doctor_ , but now I have the privilege of watching you die.’

 _It can’t be this easy_ , Nakamura thinks. It’s like that bedtime story Aidan tells the twins, the one that ends with the goblin being destroyed by the good magician. ‘And then the magician said, ‘Begone!’, and the goblin went poof! And everyone lived happily ever after.’

As the Forest People fall from the trees, Nakamura’s last coherent thought is, _I hate being right_.

All is chaos. Nakamura’s never seen this many of the Forest People in one place, and he’s being driven back toward the tent, toward Tshawe and Kovarian and the child, the quick lashes of the Forest People biting across him and drawing blood from exposed skin. By the time Kovarian shouts, ‘You’ll never take her alive!’, Nakumara is nearer than he thought, because he hears the cock of the pistol.

The child cries out, properly scared, and Nakamura’s heart breaks a little. He knows they need to keep the new Timelord away from the Doctor – what destruction could he do, if his firepower is doubled? – but if they just surrender now and give the Doctor the child, perhaps he might spare the rest of the garrison, perhaps he might confine his wrath to the platoon in the clearing. Perhaps Aidan and Tommy and Miyu might yet live.

But Kovarian has cocked her pistol, and rightly so – it’s weakness to value the life of one child, or indeed of one family, over the lives of entire worlds. Nakamura waits, bracing himself for the gunshot that will unleash the full fury of the Doctor on the planet and bring down celestial fire.

When the gunshot comes, however, it doesn’t end with a shout of fury from the Doctor, or a cry of triumph from Kovarian. Instead, there is a soft thud, and the Forest People attacking Nakamura fall back, their mouths dropping open. Across from him, O’Sullivan has frozen, her eyes riveted on something behind Nakamura’s back.

He turns in the sudden silence.

The child, standing, alive. Tshawe, her gun still pointed, her hands shaking. Kovarian, lying still on the forest floor.

‘No,’ Tshawe says, her voice trembling. Her voice has never trembled like that before, as far as Nakamura can remember. ‘We don't kill children. The Clerics don’t kill children.’

She leans down and picks up the child, carries it in her arms through the clearing, pushing past Forest People and Clerics alike, and brings it to the Doctor.

When she reaches him, he points the Screwdriver at her breast – she doesn’t flinch, Nakamura thinks numbly, but perhaps she has passed the point of flinching – and unlocks the child’s air-restraints. Free, the child reaches out to him, and he takes her into his arms.

‘Thank you,’ he says to Tshawe, a remote and terrifying god, passing judgment. He sweeps an eye over the remainder of her Clerics – some are down, thanks to the Forest People, but others are beginning to stir from their shock. ‘Come with us. I’ll protect you.’

Tshawe shakes her head wordlessly, steps backward.

He nods, and then he’s melting into the trees, the Forest People springing up into their branches, and the Clerics are left alone with their wounded and the corpse of Kovarian.

The Battle of Gamma Clearing is lost.

(Editor’s Note: In the weeks following the Battle of Gamma Clearing, the Clerics fought among themselves, left leaderless after the death of Kovarian and the loss of the child. The power struggles that ensued are beyond the reach of this story; let the reader look to Jiro Nakamura’s _Ndileka Tshawe: She Who Said No_ and Eileen O’Sullivan’s _Fighting the Traitors: Hero-Martyr Rodelio Bagsic_ , for two differing perspectives.)


End file.
